The gaming team is all at GDC this week, so I thought I’d post some of my notes on the trends from the first Steam Next Fest of 2025:

Every quarter of every year since 2021, Steam, the world’s largest PC games distribution platform, has hosted the Steam Next Fest. I looked at the data from the most recent Next Fest, which ran from February 23rd to March 3rd, to identify trends that could impact the potential success of games launching this year.

Intro to SNF 2025

First of all, for those unfamiliar, Next Fest is an event hosted by Valve on the Steam platform with the main goal of getting a bunch of PC gamers to play a wide selection of free demos for upcoming games. The week-